Testing systems are used to determine whether a processing device (e.g., a microprocessor) is operating properly. Testing systems may be used during development of a processing device and/or to test batches of processing devices during a post-manufacturing procedure. Many types of testing systems have been employed.
The In-Target Probe (ITP) run-time control tool provides examination and manipulation of an architectural state, system memory access, software debugging, chipset resource access, as well as root-cause platform routing and signal integrity evaluations. The ITP tool suite may provide such analysis by attempting to manually correlate a logic state either from a post-failure analysis of stored data from internal registers, memories and Joint Test Access Group (JTAG) scan elements, or by inferring from an execution state as observed from a front-side address, data and control bus. The foregoing approach often does not provide suitable and/or efficient observation of events within the processing device, particularly within the debug time span.
A logic analyzer may be coupled to the ITP tool in order to improve the quality of an integrated hardware and software test. In particular, the logic analyzer may present all data that is transmitted over the front-side bus during operation of the processing device. Such an approach is prohibitively expensive for almost all envisioned usage scenarios. Moreover, this approach is often unsuitably inefficient due to the large ratio of presented data to relevant data.